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Pickles. Cucumbers

Pickles made by brining cucumbers with salt, alum, spices, and sweetened vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Pickles. Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Brine

  1. Place small cucumbers in a large stone jar and cover with water.

  2. Add 1 quart of coarse sea salt and alum.

  3. Scald the brine daily for nine days.

  4. If the brine is too salty, wash and soak cucumbers overnight.

Pack and pour

  1. Prepare jars or bottles and add whole spices.

  2. Scald cider vinegar and pour it hot over the pickles.

  3. If the vinegar is strong, dilute it with one-third water.

  4. Sweeten the vinegar with 1.5 to 2 pounds of sugar per gallon.

  5. Cover pickles with vine or cabbage leaves before pouring vinegar.

  6. Exclude air from the jars.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Small cucumbers
The main vegetable that is transformed into pickles by brining and vinegar.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and seasons the brine, firming the flesh.
Cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickles and gives them their sharp flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the vinegar, balancing its sharpness in the finished pickles.

The step that matters

Scald the brine daily for nine days. Repeated scalding and brining keeps the brine clean and the cucumbers firm; skipping days lets the brine spoil and soften the pickles.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, walnut, cinnamon, clove, allspice, pepper, cider):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, walnut, cinnamon, clove, allspice, pepper, cider. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More cucumber pickles recipes

Sweet 23Green 9Spiced 9Small 7Sliced 6Sour 5 See all 334 →

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